The Singapore Writers Festival is considered one of Asia’s premier literary events that promote both new and emerging Singaporean and Asian writing to an international audience, as well as presents the world’s major literary talents to Singaporeans. This year, the 16^th Singapore Writers Festival (SWF) 2013 was held across various locations in Singapore, featuring 183 writers in over 200 programmes over 10 days.

SWF 2013 welcomed a variety of some 20,000 festival-goers to returning favourites such as the SWF lectures, as well as new surprises such as the first-ever guerilla walk curated around the Singapore Biennale installations and a dialect nursery rhymes session presented by the I-Lien Drama Society.

SWF 2013 remains one of the few literary festivals in the world that is multi-lingual, celebrating works in Singapore’s official languages – English, Malay, Chinese and Tamil. One of the highlights of the multi-lingual programme this year included the SWF 2013 Literary Pioneer Showcase that celebrated the life and achievements of Tamil Murasu founder, Thamizhavel G Sarangapany. It brought together close associates of Sarangapany to share their thoughts on his literary and social contributions. This allowed the opportunity to not only present one of the key literary heroes to Tamil audiences, but to the rest of Singapore as well.

The literary legacy of Thamizhavel G Sarangapany

Based on this year’s theme of Utopia/Dystopia, the electrifying debate: “This House Computes that Singaporeans are Illiterate Robots”, ended the Singapore Writers Festival with a full-house crowd on the 10^th on November. The debate drew parallels between etopian/dystopian worlds and the paucity of literature in Singapore.

The session ended on a positive note, with hopes of a bright future for Singapore’s literary scene, judging by the strong attendance at the ten-day festival and an increasing interest in creative literary programmes in Singapore. The festival truly enthralled readers and inspired a new generation of writers!